I saw long-time, but now retired, Billings high school teacher Bruce Wendt at the MFPE conference in Great Falls, but I wasn't able to attend his presentation. Knowing I had missed a valuable session, I emailed him, and he emailed back with some of the thoughts he presented. They are too good to keep to myself, so I wanted to share them with you as well.
In his session, Bruce related his "philosophy of how to teach history."
"I suggest teachers have a core theme (central question) around which teachers build their courses. Rather than following the chapters of a text or worrying about meeting standard x, decide your goals.
For years, I used a paraphrase of Crevecoeur’s 'What is an American?' All of my assignments and discussion would hang from that question. Not that I said that every day or even on a regular basis, but it that became in a sense my final at the end of the year."
"My second essay question for years was 'What is the American Revolution?' (Bruce means this broadly, suggesting that there was more than one, seeing the Civil War as a second and the New Deal as a third revolution.)
Shaping your class around big questions, and having students answer those questions using evidence from their readings, solves the problem of students simply googling answers to questions by "asking questions that a Google search does not answer directly."
It's harder--at least at first--to teach this way than to follow a textbook, but to my mind, there are any number of benefits. Your class will be much more interesting. Students will come out of your class understanding that history is more than "one damn thing after another." And finally, they'll have gained a lot of practice thinking deeply, making evidence based claims, and "constructing meaning."
To my mind, it doesn't get much better than that.
Do you use a single core question over the course of a semester? Unit-based core (or essential) questions? Do have a philosophy for teaching history? I'd love to hear about it.
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